Slipstream
by Speakfire
Summary: Alistair sinks his sword into the Archdemon and suddenly, everything changes.
1. Chapter 1

A/N This is what happens when I've had too much coffee. Insanity ensues. I blame Mavwolv for inadvertantly birthing this abberation. Don't say I didn't warn you.

* * *

Aedan darted in, slashing and stabbing at the Archdemon's flanks, his teeth bared and face grim, while First Enchanter Irving and his mages shot flaming bursts of fire at the great beast. Leliana sang even louder, the ancient song of valor renewing the strength and energy of the allies as they fought for their lives and the lives of every Ferelden man, woman, and child.

The dragon swept its horned head to the side, trying to knock Alistair over, but he had braced himself behind the wall of his shield and so it only pushed him back, not down. His entire body lit up with blue as Wynne cast another healing spell on him and he shouted, "Is that the best you've got?!" The Archdemon roared in defiance and Maker's breath, suddenly standing in front of the dragon seemed like the wrong place to be as a blast of hot air that reeked of corruption and death and evil—until that he hadn't even realized that evil could actually have a particular smell to it—washed over him.

When those jagged teeth snapped at him again, he rolled to the side and then leapt forward at the lowered neck, plunging his sword into the dragon's head with all of his strength. The massive curved claws dug into the very stone Fort Drakon's roof as the dragon went into a death throw, its entire body shuddering. He gripped the sword with both hands, working it even deeper.

The world went white hot and a massive stream of light blasted up and out of the Archdemon's death wound, sweeping Alistair away with it.

* * *

This was not Fort Drakon.

He was standing in the middle of what could be nothing other than a road, no matter that it was hard and slate grey and looked nothing like any road he had ever seen before. Strange metal carts—they had four wheels and he could think of no other word for them—lined the side of the street and everywhere he looked, there were oddly shaped steel and brick buildings, some reaching impossibly high into the sky.

"Look out!!!" someone shouted at him and bewildered, he turned toward the voice.

A balding man dressed in strange, loose-fitting clothing was running directly at him, waving his hands in a frantic warning gesture. That alone might have been alarming enough were it not for the enormous metal monstrosity that was cartwheeling end over end toward both of them, bursting into flame as it careened along. Without thinking, Alistair dropped to his knee and raised the shield up protectively. The man had the wherewithal to duck in behind him, and he braced himself right as it exploded with a deafening sound right in front of them, showering metal shards and glass all around.

The air was filled with the acrid stink of burning metal and, incredibly, the man behind him was laughing as he got to his feet. He wasn't young, being perhaps twice Alistair's age, crow's feet lining the corners of his hazel green eyes, but his body was as hard and fit as that of any warrior's.

Raising one eyebrow in sardonic amusement, he looked Alistair over from head to toe, taking in the sight of his shield and sword. "Nice to see that I'm not the only one who's got a knack for being in the wrong place at the wrong time," he said with a broad grin, thrusting his hand out in greeting. "I'm John McClane."

* * *

This was not Fort Drakon.

The walls of the room were lined with opulent panels and shelves, and smelled of wood and chalk and books. It took him a moment to realize what it didn't smell like—dogs—and he only noticed that because everything in Ferelden smelled like dogs, so he had the vaguest sense that something was missing. Just outside the massive window, he could see children of all ages running around and playing. He lowered his sword and shield and looked around.

"This him?" someone asked from right behind him and Alistair jerked with surprise. The stocky man had a paper-wrapped cylinder of pipeweed clamped tightly between his teeth. His black hair was bushy, sticking up in something like tufts at the top of his head and his cheeks were lined with thick muttonchops. "He don't look like much," he muttered skeptically, his eyes dark and feral.

"Now, Logan, you of all people know better than to judge someone on based on appearance alone, especially in this place," said the bald man in the rolling chair as he wheeled himself around the edge of the desk. His face seemed unimaginably kind and wise as he said, "Hello, Alistair."

The young man was unable to stop himself from gaping like a fish, which was just as well as it distracted him from Logan, who was circling him like a wary Mabari, complete with the occasional sniffing of his scent. "How…. How do you know my name?" he finally mustered up voice enough to ask.

The crippled man—for that was surely why he was in the rolling chair—smiled up at him as though he had been expecting the question. "You will find I know a great many things," he confided with amusement. "My name is Professor Charles Xavier and you are at my school for the gifted. We've been waiting on you for quite some time now."

* * *

This was not Fort Drakon.

Oh, it was a tower of some sort, he could tell that just from how far up he was. The walls weren't walls at all, but windows, and he could see other towers of equal and greater height nearby, all lit up with hundreds of lights.

A garishly dressed man in jester purple was strewn up by his ankle and dangled upside down outside of one of the windows, laughing uproariously. Another man, this one wearing a black mask with pointed ears and a long, flowing cape watched in silence. At first, the dark figure seemed the more threatening of the two but then the one swinging outside whooped with glee, "WOOOOooooOO!!!" and Alistair got his first good look at the hanged man's face. He seemed more of an abomination than a man, with bright green hair, smears of white on his face, and a bright red gaping mouth that curved upwards in an inhumanly large smile.

The jester caught sight of Alistair, his eyes gleaming with madness as he crowed, "At long last! A true white knight in shining armor to match the Dark Knight of Gotham!! Oh, the places you'll go together!!" he cackled, waving his arms to make himself swing even faster.

He approached the dark man, his sword lifted up warily. The masked figure turned toward him, tensing as though expecting attack. Alistair only had eyes for the hanged man, whose madness seemed to surpass even that of Flemeth's. "Is he a demon?" he asked in a hushed voice.

The dark knight, who looked like no other knight he had ever seen or heard of, said grimly, "Yes he is."

* * *

This was not Fort Drakon.

Alistair choked on seawater, desperately trying to get his footing as the waves buffeted him, pushing him toward the debris strewn beach. He barely managed to hang on to his sword and shield as he crawled up on shore, sputtering and gagging at the heavy taste of salt in his mouth. If he'd been a few feet further away from the shore, his armor would have drowned him.

All around him, he could hear other people coughing and retching up the salt water, and he wearily got to his feet, blinking at the glare off of the white sand beach. _Bloody pirates,_ was the first thing that popped into his mind as he got a good look at the ragtag group he'd been washed ashore with.

Alistair kept himself somewhat away from them, while remaining just inside hearing distance. The pirates were arguing loudly among themselves about the best way to find some man named 'Jack' when the mast and black sails of a pirate ship came into view, not out on the water where it belonged, but coming over the top edge of an enormous sand dune, borne along on the backs of hundreds—thousands—of white crabs.

The ship glided effortlessly toward the water, a black-haired and bearded man with kohl-lined eyes and the distinctive dress of a corsair standing proudly at the bow while everyone looked on in disbelief.

A hand rested on his forearm and he nearly jumped out of his armor, turning to look down at the woman. She seemed like a Chasind or perhaps some sort of sea-gypsy, with her dark tattooed skin and ragged flowing dress. The woman gave him a knowing look, trailing her fingers down his arm to his hand. "You have a touch of destiny about you."

* * *

This was not Fort Drakon.

"_Juh shi suh mo go dohng shee_?" the big man in the ridiculous yellow knitted cap yelped, bringing his weapon—at least that's what he presumed it was—around to point at Alistair. "Where'd you come from??"

"The Anderfels," the young Warden quipped cheerfully, looking around him at the steel walls of the room with no small amount of confusion. There were four others enclosed in there with him.

Another man in a long brown coat glanced at Alistair, giving him a speculatively look, but kept his own weapon, which looked rather like a hand-held steel blowgun, trained on the metal door in front of them. "Things don't go smooth. Zoe, how come things _never_ go smooth?" he muttered under his breath, his jaw set with tension.

"I'm suspecting it's your cross to bear, Cap'n," answered the dark woman who looked both beautiful and dangerous at the same time. "Jayne, I'm thinking he's the least of our worries at the moment with Reavers knocking at the door," she gave the big man in front of Alistair a pointed look.

Jayne grit his teeth but did not argue, immediately swinging the end of his massive blowgun toward the door. "Here they come," he whispered fearfully as spine tingling howls of rage came from outside the windowless room.

Something began to pound on the door and was quickly joined by others, until the metal began to bow into with the force of their combined blows. "Maker's breath, is it darkspawn?" Alistair asked in a low voice, hoisting his sword and shield and preparing for a nasty fight. It sounded like them but try as he might, he could not sense them through the taint.

"Worse," the Captain said grimly out the side of his mouth, his eyes trained forward.

"Reavers," breathed the last person in the room, a wisp of a girl with dark hair and wide eyes. In her hands, she clutched two wickedly curved long knives.

The door burst open before he could ask anything else and a dark mass of abominations spilled into the rooms. They weren't darkspawn, no, but whatever a 'Reaver' was, it wasn't much better, because beneath their twisted piercings and tattered bits of clothing pieced together from what looked like human skin, Alistair could tell that these had once been men. Now they were something else, men driven mad with rage demons and their own twisted desires.

The blowguns made loud cracks of sound when their darts were fired at the Reavers. Any of them that were hit fell back snarling, fighting to get up and attack again, the round holes in their bodies oozing blood. Only a direct hit to the head or heart seemed to take them completely out of the fight.

Alistair defended himself furiously, using his shield to knock the Reavers back and then skewering them with his sword when they got in range and was vaguely aware of the girl fighting at his side. She moved with the exquisite grace of a dancer, spinning and twisting as she lashed out with her weapons to cut the possessed things down. Shifting instinctively, the young man found himself fighting in tandem with her, back to back. She seemed to anticipate his every move before he made it, so that when he bashed them aside with his shield, they fell onto her waiting blades and died. When he slashed at their faces, she'd dart her daggers in to stab at their chests to finish them off.

Zoe, Jayne and the Captain killed as many as they could at range but for every Reaver that fell, though, it seemed there was another to take its place. Jayne cursed with pain as a harpoon shot by one pinned his leg to the floor. Just when it seemed they were on the verge of being completely over run, Alistair focused his will and pushed it outward with a sudden burst of force. The smiting wave was strong enough to knock back and stun every single Reaver in range, and gave them just enough of an edge that a few minutes later, every single one of the demon-possessed creatures was dead.

"Well that was _tian fuhn di fu_," said the Captain in some language Alistair didn't recognize and staggered to his feet, his face spattered with blood and gore. "I don't rightly know that was you did there at the end but I reckon it doesn't matter either, seein' as how the ends is we're all still in one piece. You've fought Reavers before, I take it?"

"Far more times than I care to remember," Alistair said honestly.

The Captain seemed almost taken aback by his response and shifted his gaze down to the dark haired girl, who stood there in silence staring up at Alistair intently. "River, you all right?"

"Is she all right?" Jayne asked in outrage. "I've got a gorram harpoon in my leg, in case no one noticed!" Zoe rolled her eyes and went over to help the big man.

"Lost and found," River murmured, giving the blonde Warden a secretive smile. Then she blinked in remembrance, a somewhat disgusted expression on her face as she turned to answer her Captain. "I swallowed a bug."


	2. Chapter 2

A/N So, back by popular request, a few more 'slipstreams'. I felt guilty about not doing updates on either my 3:10 to Yuma fanfic or my Spiritus Mundi so this is what you get. I'm sorry but I've been hitting the writing so hard and heavy the past few weekends I needed a bit of a breather--Plus, between Return to Ostagar and Mass Effect 2 both coming out, I'm um.. distracted. Enjoy either way!!

* * *

Alistair didn't even want to open his eyes. He could both see and feel the intensity of the light glaring down on him clear through his eyelids and Maker's breath, his entire body ached with pain, like Flemeth had snapped him up in his mouth and shaken him as though he were nothing more than a mabari hound's chew toy. The strange sounds all around him hurt his ears, clanking of metal, the gurgling of some thick, viscous liquid, a continuous beep, beep, beep, all made his head ache worse than it ever had.

"We did it. We really did it," he heard a man's deep voice say with something approaching reverence.

He could not believe the amount of effort it took to pry his eyelids apart and when he did, they burned like Andraste's flaming pyre. Slowly, the world around him came into focus, the drab bleak grey of the ceiling above obscured by the man's face hovering over his.

There was such sorrow and compassion in those dark, expressive eyes—here was someone who knew what he was going through because he had experienced it himself at some point in time.

"Welcome, Alistair, to the real world," he said solemnly.

* * *

The twisted ruins of a steel city sprawled all around him, as far as the eye could see. All but lost amidst the vast destruction, Alistair had never felt so completely, utterly alone. There were no birds twittering and no insects buzzing. The only sound was the quiet whisper of the wind, stirring up eddies of dust and soot.

What else could he do? He slung his shield over his shoulder and sheathed his sword and walked eastward. The clattering shuffle of his boots over the ravaged ground seemed abnormally loud in such silence. Occasionally he would glance downward and see remnants of the city's previous inhabitants, the distinctive shape of their charred bones poking from beneath rubble, the gaping empty eye sockets of their skulls staring into eternity, teeth bared in the blank grin of death.

A prickling sensation tickled the back of his neck and he instinctively knew he was no longer alone. Something moved up ahead of him, a vaguely humanoid shape that was the same color of metal and dust as everything else around him.

"Hey!" he called out to the figure, beyond relieved to see that he wasn't the only living thing in this city of the dead.

It whipped around to face him, the curved metal dome of the head glinting in the sunlight and the eyes glaring a bright, angry red as it stared back at him. It wasn't a man, but some kind of golem, and it immediately started walking toward him, raising a massive barrel of an arm to point in his direction. The arm twirled in place and began making a loud RAT-TAT-TAT-TAT of sound, tiny explosions suddenly erupting in the ground right in front of him.

He was so surprised he forgot to move, and suddenly something hit him from the side—hard—bowling him over and knocking him behind a stone barricade. Alistair stared in surprise up at the figure and thank the Maker, it was another person, his spikey brown hair poking up from the thick scarf he had wrapped around his face.

The youth yanked it down, his blue eyes intent as he growled impatiently, "Come with me if you want to live."

* * *

It reeked of blood and sweat and death and piss and a myriad of other stenches that Alistair could not put a name to—and wasn't sure he wanted to. He was in a long, dimly lit corridor with stairs climbing upward surrounded by other men, all of whom were armed with heavy tower shields and short spears, clad in chain hauberks and wearing a wide variety of battered open-faced helmets.

There was nonstop thunder, a roaring sound that surged and ebbed in waves of sound, all around, powerful enough to make the walls and the ground shake. He had only heard a sound like this one other time in his life right before the Battle of Denerim, when he had been stirring up the armies of men and dwarves and elves right before charging the darkspawn horde. It was the sound of thousands of voices cheering.

A door opened at the end of the corridor and all of the men, himself included, trotting up the stairs. He got the feeling none of them had any more of an idea what to expect on the other side of that door than he did. That wasn't very reassuring.

The roar of the crowd became almost deafening when they emerged out onto the sandy, flat surface of what could be nothing other than an enormous arena, one that would put the Proving Grounds of Orzammar to shame if the dwarves ever saw it. Outdoor coliseums were very popular in Antiva and the Free Marches, where spectators could go see both men and women pit their strength and skill in fights to the death against each other and large predators.

Alistair's blood spattered armor made him and sword made him stand out among the other men, but either no one noticed or no one cared. They were all staring up in amazement that the throng of people, screaming and waving their hands at them as they clustered together in the middle of the arena. One other man beside himself was clad different from the others, a man with the squared shoulders and bearing of one who had been in the military a long time. He wore a black, hardened leather breastplate with the emblem of two rearing horses and his helmet all but obscured his face from the nose up.

The men around Alistair lined up in ranks and he instinctively moved in among them, finding himself in the front row. The crowd started chanting, "Caesar! Caesar! Caesar!" and everyone, including Alistair and the men looked up at the ornately decorated balcony ahead of them. A man, woman and boy all came into sight. The man had a simple leaf crown of sorts on his head and though he smiled and waved at the crowd, his blue eyes were hard and cruel. The boy was almost beyond himself with excitement, grinning broadly and looking everywhere as though trying to take in too much at once. The woman was beautiful, with dark, lustrously curly hair. She held back from the edge of the balcony, a slightly indulgent smile on her face, but her deference to the man spoke more of unease than affection.

The Warden darted a quick glance down the line at the men with him, and his attention immediately was drawn to the expression of the man with the leather breastplate. He was staring intently at Caesar, his blue-green eyes lit up with barely suppressed hatred and rage, his jaw set with deadly determination.

The rest of the gladiators—for only that could be what they all were—raised up their spears in salute and Alistair fumbled to draw his sword, lifting it up right as they said in unison, "We who are about to die salute you!"

_This doesn't bode well_, he thought to himself.


End file.
